Problem Solver: Water keeps flowing after owner asks that it stop

Darnell James tried to do a good thing by buying a distressed property in West Pullman. It didn't work out.

February 03, 2013|Jon Yates' "What's Your Problem?"

Darnell James had trouble getting the city of Chicago to turn off water service at a property he purchased in the West Pullman neighborhood. The last tenants moved out in May, and the house has been vacant since. (Taylor Glascock, Chicago Tribune)

When Darnell James bought the house at 12053 S. Michigan Ave. out of foreclosure, he thought he was doing something good for the community.

"My goal was to take some of these properties that banks are foreclosing on and give people some decent housing while not charging exorbitant rent," James said.

He fixed up the house and immediately found renters.

"I had some pretty good tenants," James said. "These last tenants had been there for four years. They didn't want to move."

But life in the West Pullman neighborhood proved rough.

The renters had a teenage son who crossed some local gang members, James said. Things quickly devolved from there.

In May, the family asked James if they could move out immediately, saying they feared for their safety. James encouraged them to go.

"Once all that trouble occurred — people breaking in and threatening them, threatening with violence and guns — I understood them leaving because I would leave too," he said. "It's just unfortunate."

After the family moved out, James secured the property, but it didn't do much good.

Thieves took the wiring and copper pipes, kitchen cabinets, newly installed gutters — even the bars off the windows, James said.

"Everything is taken out of it," he said. "It's like a shell. I was depressed about it. It's my money that I put in there, and people just take stuff."

The house was in such bad shape that the city's Department of Buildings notified him Nov. 1 that it had been deemed "dangerous and unsafe or uncompleted and abandoned."

James didn't argue.

On Dec. 4, the city filed suit against him in Cook County Circuit Court, calling the property a public nuisance. The lawsuit sought to have James demolish, repair or clean up the property, or allow the city to do so. The city posted 33 photos of the house, in various states of disrepair, on its website.

For James, the city's move was neither surprising nor necessarily unwelcome. Repairing the house would cost an estimated $50,000, he said, more than it is worth. And if he made repairs, vandals would likely destroy it again before new tenants could move in.

His seven-year experiment in bolstering the housing stock in West Pullman had failed.

James canceled his electric and gas service, but canceling his water service proved difficult.

He visited a city customer service office Dec. 12 and asked that the water be shut off. He was told he had to first register the house as vacant.

On Dec. 13, he paid the city the required fee of $500, and the house was placed on the registry of vacant properties.

But when he returned to the finance office Dec. 17 and again asked to have the water shut off, he was told inclusion on the registry of vacant properties was not enough to prove the house was empty, he said.

"They said they don't really know if it's vacant," he said.

The customer service representative told him the solution was to install a meter at the previously meterless property so he wouldn't be charged if no water was used. Again, James asked for the water to be turned off, which would help prevent squatters from moving in and the pipes from freezing.

The standoff left him in an unenviable position. Because the property has no water meter, the city has been charging him every six months based on estimated usage. His last bill was for $358.89, which James paid Dec. 14.

He said he tried repeatedly in December and January to get the city to turn off water service but was told each time that he had not yet proved the property is empty.

Befuddled, James emailed What's Your Problem? in late January.

He said he can't seem to get a straight answer out of the water department.

"I said, 'If I don't pay the bill, will you shut it off?' They said, 'Sure,'" James said. "I said, 'Why don't you shut it off when I ask you to? I'm paid in full.'"

Sometime over the holidays, the remaining pipes in the basement froze and then burst, causing further damage.

James said he doesn't understand how the city can file a lawsuit calling the property "dangerous," accept his $500 to declare the house abandoned and post dozens of pictures of his ransacked home but still not consider the house empty for purposes of shutting off water service.

"You can look at it, it's empty," James said. "They can turn it off from the street. They don't even have to go into the property."

The Problem Solver called the Department of Water Management and the Department of Buildings.

On Thursday, one day after the Problem Solver inquired about the case, the city shut off water to the house.

A spokeswoman for the building department said that when James filed his paperwork to declare the property abandoned Dec. 13, an automatic notification should have been sent to the water department.

She referred a question about why the water wasn't shut off before Thursday to the water department.